German ministry may have forgotten funds for reunification celebration

April 30, 2019

A celebration marking a key national holiday in Germany has been given emergency funding following an apparent blunder by the country’s Interior Ministry, according to the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Germany’s Federal Interior Ministry is tasked with staging a nation-wide celebration in October 2020 to commemorate 30 years of German unity, yet a report in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung claims the Interior Ministry overlooked the date, forcing officials to request €61 million ($68.4 million) for “unplanned expenses” from the country’s Finance Ministry.

The modern German state was created in 1990, after the fall of the Berlin wall the year before.

In its request, the Interior Ministry said the need for the funds was to meet “unforeseen needs.” Officials subsequently applied for funding after the budget for the current year was set, requesting €30 million for this year and another €31 million for 2020.

The ministry, led by Bavarian conservative Horst Seehofer — a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic and Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) — did not reply to a DW request for comment.

Read more: Chancellor Angela Merkel premieres pitch to frustrated voters in Germany’s east

Celebrating unity in the public interest

The country’s Finance Ministry is only allowed to approve extra-budgetary resources in the case of truly unforeseeable events such as natural disasters or major emergencies.

However, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) — coalition partner to Merkel’s CDU/CSU — apparently granted the request.

In its financing plea, the Interior Ministry emphasized the need to organize the 2020 event in a format completely different than previously planned in order to “avoid further fueling existing frustrations and tendencies towards social division.”

“The necessity of extra funding is factually undeniable,” Interior Ministry Finance Secretary Bettina Hagedorn said in a document cited by the Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

The lack of a proper celebration could risk “adverse affects on sociopolitical state interests,” she added.

Read more: Eastern Germany still lags, three decades after reunification: study

Bridging the east-west divide

The Interior Ministry announced that the celebration will be designed to unite citizens in eastern and western Germany. Seehofer has promised a “serious and honest dialog” on social cohesion and living conditions 30 years on, as well as suggesting the construction of a new center — located in eastern Germany — devoted to the spirit of the 1989 East German peace movement and the furtherance of east-west unity.

A party-planning committee is due to present concrete project proposals by mid-August.

The modern German state was created in 1990, when capitalist West Germany and formerly Soviet-dominated East Germany officially united after decades of division.

Juxtaposing East and West Germany in photos

Paradox of prosperity

A boy flies a kite in the middle of the A42 freeway in Germany’s Ruhr Valley, just before it is finished and opened for traffic. In the background, Duisburg’s steelworks spit smoke into the skies. Rudi Meisel’s 1979 photograph depicts West Germany’s age of prosperity.

Juxtaposing East and West Germany in photos

A divided heart

Waiting, separation, love – this image contains the most pressing issues for the divided German soul in 1980, nine years before the Berlin Wall would come down. The people in the picture are waiting for a subway train at the Alexanderplatz station in East Berlin. As a photojournalist, Rudi Meisel traveled extensively through both Germanys and captured what he saw.

Juxtaposing East and West Germany in photos

Communal building projects in the East

Pictured is a modern apartment complex in the East German city of Halle-Neustadt in 1983. The photographer’s perspective casts the buildings in an ironic light: Veiled by the rain they seem much less imposing, while the muddy, unfinished street becomes the focal point of the image.

Juxtaposing East and West Germany in photos

Everyone’s playground

Is this picture from East or West Germany? In Rudi Meisel’s photos, it’s often hard to tell. He was one of only a few photographers to be allowed to work in both Germanys prior to 1989. This picture was taken in 1980 at the site of the former Anhalter Bahnhof railway station in the Kreuzberg district of West Berlin. Damaged during World War II, the station was closed in 1952.

Juxtaposing East and West Germany in photos

Worlds collide

An elegantly dressed woman and a military tank: Two very different worlds come together in Rudi Meisel’s photo, taken in 1980 in West Berlin on a national day dedicated to celebrating the military. During the Cold War, such weapons were put on show like trophies.

Juxtaposing East and West Germany in photos

Dreary monotony

Grey streets, rain, East German monotony: Rudi Meisel took this photo on the corner of Schönhauser Allee and Dimitroffstrasse in East Berlin. In 1984, it was hard to imagine that Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district would become the hippest part of the united city less than a decade later. The exhibition “Compatriots 1977-1987” runs through November 1 in the c/o Gallery in Berlin’s Amerika Haus.

Author: Stefan Dege / kbm